Police: Video backs Oakland officer who killed man armed with hatchet

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Oakland police officers investigate the scene of an officer-involved fatal shooting in front of Tolins Liquor store on International Boulevard and 71st Avenue in Oakland, Calif. on Saturday, August 1, 2009. The shooting occurred at approximately 9:00pm (Jane Tyska/Staff)

The owners of the Oakland, Calif. liquor store where police shot a man to death Saturday night strongly deny that they called police to the scene, saying that the victim was familiar to them, "a regular customer," during an interview at the store Sunday, August 2, 2009 in Oakland, Calif. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff)

Undated photo of Brownie Polk, the man shot by Oakland, Calif. police during a disturbance at an east Oakland liquor store Saturday, August 1, 2009. (Handout photo)

Tiffany Townsend, a niece of Brownie Polk, the man shot dead by an Oakland, Calif. police officer during a disturbance at an east Oakland liquor store Saturday night, poses for a photograph with a picture of her uncle outside the store Sunday, August 2, 2009. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff)

OAKLAND — Video of a man being shot and killed by an Oakland police officer Saturday corroborated the officer’s statements that the man was threatening her with a hatchet, police said Sunday.

Brownie Polk, a 46-year-old decades-long resident of the East Oakland neighborhood where he was shot, was inside the Tolin Liquor Store at 7101 International Blvd. shortly after 9 p.m. Saturday, police said.

Someone flagged down a patrolling police officer, who the department has yet to identify, and told her Polk was inside, “causing a commotion, harassing merchants and harassing customers,” police spokesman Jeff Thomason said.

The officer spoke to Polk and began giving him orders, Thomason said. Polk lifted his hand above his head, holding a hatchet, and moved close enough to the officer that he would have been able to kill her, Thomason said.

At that point, the officer shot Polk, who later died at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Thomason said.

Thomason said he did not know exactly what orders the officer had given Polk, or at what point she drew her gun.

Asked why the officer used a semi-automatic pistol rather than a Taser to disable Polk, Thomason said Tasers don’t work in every situation.

“When you’re in a life-threatening situation, you’re taught to use all the tools available to you. … I don’t know precisely how far Polk was from here, but there is a certain threshold we’re taught where someone can kill you if they have a stabbing instrument, and he was well within that area.”

Investigators recovered a video from the store’s security system that Thomason said corroborated the officer’s version of the story.

Thomason said the video won’t be released publicly any time soon, due to investigations by the Police Department’s internal investigations and homicide sections and by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

Thomason said he did not know whether the video would be made public once the investigations are finished.

The officer has been a member of the department about 18 months. She had not been involved in a shooting before Saturday, officials said. She has been placed on paid administrative leave, which is routine in officer-involved shootings.

Saturday’s incident was the city’s fourth officer-involved shooting this year and the third fatality.

On July 15, two officers killed 36-year-old Parnell Smith at 16th Avenue and International Boulevard after they said he pulled a gun and tried to shoot them. On March 21, SWAT officers killed Lovelle Mixon, 26, inside an East Oakland apartment after he fatally shot two motorcycle officers and two SWAT team members.

Polk had been a customer of the store for many years and was seen there two or three times a day, according to Riad El Haj, 19, a store employee who said his uncle owns the business. El Hajj said he was not in the store at the time of the shooting.

“Brownie was no problem customer,” El Haj said. “He’d be in here 30, 45 minutes at a time just talking and hanging out. Everybody on this block knows Brownie. He didn’t mess with nobody.”

Family members and friends gathered outside the store Sunday said Polk was known to always have one tool or another in his hand, as he worked doing a variety of handyman-style upkeep and repair jobs.

Several people gathered outside the storefront Sunday and shouted at employees, saying they should not have called the police.

El Haj acknowledged the tense situation at the store Sunday.

“Now we’re going to have drama at the store because people think this was our fault,” El Haj said. “But we didn’t want this to happen.”

Polk’s brother-in-law, Leonard Townsend said, “It’s getting scary out there especially in light of the killing of the Oakland cops in that area, people upset with the situation and how it unfolded, and recent shootings.

“People are uneasy” he continued. “It seems like the Oakland cops are always in the news with the shootings and people don’t understand it.”

Polk was a lifetime Oakland resident who lived in the neighborhood for about 30 years, family members said. He had a 16-year-old son.

His family was making arrangements Sunday but said they planned to announce tonight information about Polk’s memorial services and a possible trust fund to be set up for Polk’s son.

Harry Harris is a Pulitzer Prize winning breaking news reporter for the Bay Area News Group. He began his Oakland Tribune career in September 1965 as a 17-year-old copyboy. He became a reporter in 1972 and is considered one of the best crime and breaking news reporters in the country. He has covered tens of thousands of murders and other crimes in the East Bay. He has also mentored dozens of young reporters, some of whom continue to work in journalism today.